Burial at Thebes A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

Summary: "Though Heaney lets ideology interfere with tragedy, he has nonetheless composed a poem full of brilliant strokes. He cannot approach the kaleidoscopic metrical effects of the original (no one can), but he varies his rhythms ingeniously. It is doubtful that these register on the stage when it is performed, but on the page they are compelling....The choral odes have a clarity far from the allusive teasings of the orig...inal, but dramatic in this new context, and of a searing beauty. Heaney omits the more obscure elements, or the simply repetitive ones (as in the famous song on human mystery). His rapt descriptions of Teiresias' augury equal the ability of Christopher Logue, in his Homer translations, to make these exotic things come creepily alive for us." [read more]